ERIC Number: EJ1171704
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Mar-5
Pages: 39
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1068-2341
EISSN: N/A
The Intersections of Selves and Policies: A Poetic Inquiry into the Hydra of Teacher Education
Cross, Stephanie Behm; Dunn, Alyssa Hadley; Dotson, Erica K.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, v26 n29 Mar 2018
This article explores the intersection of selves and policies for teacher educators in an era of teacher education reform. Borne out of a promise to one another to write about our experiences navigating increasingly complex market-driven, neoliberal attacks on our work and world, we collected data across several years that documented our attempt to break our silence (Lorde, 1977) and explore how we, as teacher educators, "make sense of neoliberal reforms and policies in teacher preparation." We draw specifically on Dunn's theory of the Hydra of Teacher Education (2016), alongside literature on reforms and policies in teacher preparation and teacher educators' forms of resistance to frame our work, and utilize arts-based poetic inquiry methodology (Prendergast, 2009; Rath, 2001) to explore the real, everyday implications of educational policy in our lives and in our careers. The poems we created as a "performative act" (Prendergast, 2009, p. xxiii) revealed that our experiences seemed to follow a cycle from hopelessness, to silence, to acquiescence, to collective resistance. We look carefully at this last portion of the cycle in our work, wondering "how, if at all, teacher educators can resist the neoliberalization of teacher preparation." We conclude with implications for research, policy, and the practice of teacher education as we write to understand, write to resist, and write to survive.
Descriptors: Educational Policy, Teacher Educators, Preservice Teacher Education, Educational Change, Neoliberalism, Educational Theories, Resistance (Psychology), Art, Research Methodology, Poetry
Colleges of Education at Arizona State University and the University of South Florida. c/o Editor, USF EDU162, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620-5650. Tel: 813-974-3400; Fax: 813-974-3826; Web site: http://epaa.asu.edu
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A